Why Linus Torvalds Hates GNOME, Likes KDE

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It’s no secret that Linus Torvalds, Linux’s founder, dislikes the GNOME desktop. In 2005, for example, Torvalds posted on the GNOME-usability list that “I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.”

Torvalds feels this way, in part, due to his perception that “This ‘users are idiots, and are confused by functionality’ mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don’t use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn’t do what I need it to do.”

In a recent series of posting to the Linux Foundation’s Desktop Architects mailing list — a list for developers working on finding common ground, ala the Project Portland, for the various Linux desktop environments — Torvalds went into more detail as to exactly why he prefers KDE’s approach to the desktop, to that of GNOME.